As final curtain looms, owners review the past

From a humble start in a tent, complex evolved into a star-studded attraction

September 17, 2003|By John Owens, Tribune staff reporter.

For the last 16 years, John Lazzara has spent his summers in a first-floor office at the Drury Lane Theatre-Martinique Restaurant and Banquet complex in Evergreen Park, coming up with possible show ideas for the fall and winter seasons.

He has kept up that routine this summer. Lazzara, who owns the Drury Lane with his brother Ray, was in his office early one August morning, smoking one cigarette after another and ruminating about the musicals and concerts he would present to his audience of mostly senior citizens.

But it's the end of an era for the colorful Lazzara, whose nickname ("Johnny Lightning") is in neon lights on the wall behind his desk.

In January, after his annual "Celebration on Ice" show closes in Drury Lane's 800-seat theater-in-the-round, the complex will shut down for good. Soon after, wrecking crews will take center stage, leveling a venue that has been around in one form or another since 1946. By 2005, a Wal-Mart will stand in its place.

As expected, longtime patrons and employees are crushed at the prospect of losing this landmark on 95th Street near Western Avenue.

For years, a huge neon sign has beckoned to drivers on 95th.

Countless South Siders have had ceremonies in the Martinique's Wedding Chapel or held their receptions in the Grand Ballroom. Countless others have thrilled at seeing an old-style Hollywood great like Mickey Rooney mingling with theatergoers in the lobby after a show.

`I will miss it terribly'

"It's a very special place with a very family-oriented atmosphere," said Patti Boyle, who has worked at Drury Lane as a hostess since 1964. "I will miss it terribly, but we'll all be there until the end."

"Customers are saying, How can they do this to me? How can they close up?" added Myron Barg, a longtime patron who also recently began providing travel promotions for the theater.

"It's like the old Edgewater Beach Hotel. It's a shame to see these places go. But I guess you have to go with the times."

Lazzara started negotiations on leasing the land to Wal-Mart last March, even though his dinner theater has consistently done well with its core group of audiences. But the financial rewards of the deal--not disclosed by Lazzara--were too good for him to turn down.

So now, as Frank Sinatra-impersonator Bill Acosta (performing at Drury Lane in October) might say, the end is near. But Johnny Lightning's going out doing it his way.

"Of course, I'm sad and it's starting to hit me a little," said Lazzara, who also is a producer for many of the shows at his theater. "I guess I'm a little lost because I'm always picking shows and concerts for next year at this time.

"My concentration now is producing great shows for our customers who have always counted on us. They won't be disappointed."

That's most probably true, since the final season at the theater will feature shows and concerts much like the fare featured at Drury Lane over the last 50-plus years.

"Sweet and Hot," a revue featuring the songs Harold Arlen wrote in the 1930s and '40s for Broadway and Hollywood, opens on Sept. 3; Drury Lane stalwart Debbie Reynolds makes her eighth appearance at the venue starting on Oct. 22.

Venues disappearing

As recently as the early 1980s, performers such as Reynolds had their choice of six dinner theaters in the Chicago area. But with the demise of the Drury Lane-Martinique complex and Summit's Candlelight Playhouse in 1997, there is now only one such venue, the Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace, owned by Anthony De Santis, the founder of the Evergreen Park Drury Lane.

De Santis once operated five dinner theaters in the area. In addition to the Evergreen Park and Oakbrook Terrace sites, he also had Drury Lane East (in McCormick Place), Drury Lane North (now the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire) and Drury Lane Water Tower Place.

The McCormick Place and Water Tower venues have long since closed, while the Marriott Theatre still has live plays but not dinner theater. The Pheasant Run theater in St. Charles has an arrangement with The Noble Fool theater to present productions, but it doesn't do dinner packages anymore.

"They're all just disappearing," De Santis said about dinner theaters. "One time there were hundreds of them, but now there are only three to five left in the country."

The Drury Lane-Martinique complex in Evergreen Park was perhaps the best-known of all the dinner theaters in the U.S. Seemingly every well-known, slightly past-his-prime Hollywood star and recording artist performed there over the last 50 years.

When reached at his office, the 89-year-old De Santis had no problem remembering the names of the people he hired to play in the pink stucco building on 95th Street.